Istanbul is widely recognized
as the name of Turkey's most well known city, but it was not always this
way, and even today some confusion over its proper name still exists.
The confusion is rooted in the various names the city assumed under the
Ottomans in the centuries after their conquest of the city in 1453. Although
the Ottomans did not purposely change the city's name, they opted to make
"Constantinople" into a more Turkish style name "Konstantiniye"
(which loosely translates as "of Constantine"), however variations on
Konstantiniye soon cropped up.

"Stanbulin,"
(Greek for "to the city") once commonly found on road signs directing
travelers to the capital, was punned by devout Turks into Islambol, where
"Islam abounds." The names Islambol and Konstantiniye were used interchangeably
in Ottoman documents up until the empire's demise in 1923. Westerners
continued to refer to the city as Constantinople well into the 20th century.
In the 19th century, however, the city's large foreign expatriate community
took to calling the old city Stamboul. Western accounts of the old city
during this period make regular references to the name.

Fig.
1. An envelope (circa 1921) sent from a Sephardi named Vitali Isaac
Salti of Constantinople.
This card demonstrates the usage of both Stamboul, and Constantinople.
A common practice prior to the formation of the modern Republic
of Turkey.

Many times the Germans
refer to Istanbul as 'Konstantinopel', the French and the British as 'Constantinople'
and the Italians as 'Constantinopoli'. Although the official name of the
city has, ever since the establishment of the Republic, been 'Istanbul'
and great sensitivity shown on this subject, Europe resists the adoption
of the name 'Istanbul'.

According to a popular
story that has existed for many years, the Byzantines did not refer to
the city by its actual name, but, because of it size, simply as 'Polis'
(the City), and when they wanted to say 'to the City', they said 'eist
enpolin' (is-tin-polin), which was the (possible) origin of the name 'Istanbul'.
Recent research has shown that the name 'Istanbul' was used if not during
the Byzantine period, at least during the 11th century and that the Turks
knew the city by this name. Istanbul has had other names at various times
but none of them was used widely or for any great length of time. During
the Turkish period the names 'Dersaadet' and 'Deraliye' were used. Some
official correspondence and coins had the transcription of 'Konstantinoupolis'or
'Konstantiniye', although the use of the name 'Konstantiniye' was prohibited
at one time during the Ottoman period by Sultan Mustafa III, its use continued,
to be abandoned during the republican period.

Fig. 2. Map demonstrating the physical division of
Istanbul by the Bosporus River.

The name controversy was assumed to be settled when Atatürk
officially renamed the city Istanbul in the 1920s. It took Westerners a
few decades to accept the name, as Constantinople continued to appear on
maps well into the 1960s, when it began to appear in parentheses next to
Istanbul. The Greeks still do not use the Turkish name, and Konstantinopolis
continues to be used on maps and road signs in Greece today.